These kinds of lists can be pretty straightforward. The new Castlevania: Lords of Shadow oozes dark atmosphere, Dead Rising 2 is splatter-y fun and Saw II (the video game) mixes gory puzzles within a haunted house atmosphere if you just can’t get enough of Saw IV (the movie).

But those games eat up a fair amount of time (Castlevania alone takes a few hours to really kick in) and there’s better things to be do than being stuck in front of a TV this weekend. With that in mind, here are some titles for some light gaming. Even better, they can all be downloaded on a whim if you feel especially inspired by the holiday. Your picks in the comments (anyone try the Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare DLC yet?)

THQ

Costume Quest – Maybe you’re not too old for Halloween, but you are old enough to remember a simply time when the night was all about dressing up, getting candy and rescuing your sibling from goblins having a fun time with the other neighborhood kids. I’ve already written about how Costume Quest may be the quintessential Halloween game, but it also has a strong suburban 80’s vibe in its costumes and settings. How many of us remember dressing up as a Transformer (pictured at top) or trick-or-treating at the local mall (above)?

The meat of the game comes in the turn-based battles that kick in when you encounter monsters by trick-or-treating at the wrong spot. Your robot costume turns you into an actual robot, the Statue of Liberty get up the Statue of Liberty. The strategy involved in outfitting characters with different attributes feels a bit RPG-lite, like someone sneaked vegetables into my dessert, but it’s never bogged down by too much number crunching. And once you’re done with a battle it’s off to wander to the next delightfully festive corner of this holiday wonderland.

Limbo – Here’s another game about a brother trying to find his sister, only with eerier overtones. It’s a few months old, but still stunning enough to deserve attention. After waking in the middle of a dark forest, a boy must wander his way through traps and platforming puzzles. The black and white visuals are almost suffocating in their starkness, and the entire game feels as if it’s being projected onto your TV through a blend of shadow puppetry and alchemy. But if the drained color scheme and minimalist sound design scream art-school pretentiousness, they’re balanced out by the some ghastly consequences for failing to figure out the puzzles: deaths by impalement, bear trap, and giant spider are all too common. It’s only then that you realize the dream-like landscape has suddenly shifted into nightmare. Limbo’s release towards the end of summer always felt odd, but the coming of longer nights and cooler air makes this as good a time as any to revisit this haunting, hypnotic game.

Angry Birds Halloween – On the other hand, here’s a game – okay, maybe it’s more of an expansion pack – that knows how to take advantage of the season. Maybe you’ve already gotten three stars on all the levels of the original Angry Birds, or maybe you just want to fly through some easy levels that give you a feeling of accomplishment (for a little while anyway). The 45 new levels here could apply to either case, and the Halloween skins are just delicious orange icing on the pumpkin cupcake. How could you flinging birds at those dastardly pigs – some of them hiding inside jack-o-lanterns – against a backdrop of gnarled trees and a yellow moon? Reworking the theme song with an organ and theremin was a fun touch, and makes the standard happy tune played upon passing a level all the more disappointing. It also would have been nice to get a new bird to play with – say, a crow or raven – but this is clearly a case of sticking with a proven formula. Little surprise then, that Angry Birds Halloween is just as addictive, and a perfect way to pass the time on that long Bart ride home on Sunday.